Ronald Murray refutes stories of Adolph Rupp being a racist. Murray is a former athletic trainer for Gen. Robert Neyland at Tennessee and Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp. He's 87 and still has strong feelings for both places.
Michael Patrick/Knoxville News Sentinel

Ronald Murray in his LaFollette home Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Murray is a former athletic trainer for Gen. Robert Neyland at Tennessee and Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp. He's 87 and still has strong feelings for both places, and carried lessons from both men into his life.(Photo: Michael Patrick/News Sentinel)

LAFOLLETTE – Ronald Murray was drinking beer with Adolph Rupp at Pat O’Brien’s in New Orleans when the verbal agreement was made – Rupp was going to hire Murray away from Gen. Robert Neyland and the Tennessee football program and make him head trainer for Kentucky basketball.

There may be another person in the history of the world who has worked for both Neyland and Rupp in some capacity. Please write or call if you know of one. But there’s only one person who has lived that last paragraph. And for as much as those two men, enduring giants of their respective sports and universities, meant to Murray, his proudest possession is a letter from then-President Richard Nixon dated March 20, 1972.

It congratulates Murray, then a probation counselor with the Tennessee Department of Corrections, for his work in creating and operating the Knoxville Work Release Center.

“By helping men on parole redirect their lives into useful activities, you are performing a vital service for every American,” Nixon wrote, citing then-U.S. Rep. John Duncan Sr. for telling him of Murray’s efforts.

We’re in the living room of Murray’s home on a hill in LaFollette, where he has lived for 57 of his 87 years, because of his sports connections – they include splitting the cost of a ukulele with then-Knoxville Smokies manager Earl Weaver in 1956, by the way. We talk mostly about sports, and Murray remains fiercely loyal to UT football and UK men’s basketball. He follows the Vols with the Knoxville News-Sentinel and the Wildcats with The Cats’ Pause Magazine, no internet required. He has strong feelings on both programs.

“Butch has got to go at the end of the season,” Murray said of embattled UT football coach Butch Jones. “Even if he wins out, I don’t see them keeping him unless he fires his two coordinators. Even then, I think they ought to just let him go.”

Murray favors USC offensive coordinator and former Vols quarterback Tee Martin as Jones’ replacement, for the record. And he hopes John Calipari never leaves Kentucky.

“He hasn’t let me down yet,” Murray said of Calipari. “He’s not doing anything wrong, not breaking any rules, and I don’t believe he will.”

Sports has been a big part of Murray’s life since his childhood and on through his time of coaching youth and high school basketball in LaFollette. But those 17 years in corrections were most fulfilling of all for the widower, father of one, grandfather of two and great-grandfather of one. You could say he was an innovator, like his famous mentors.

The late Neyland is credited with timing patterns in the passing game, the study of game film and the use of a phone to communicate between the sideline and press box. The late Rupp is credited with creating the “guard around” play, revolutionizing the fast break and popularizing the 1-3-1 zone defense. Murray pushed for work release, and school release, and started a toy drive to make sure those in Tennessee prisons would be able to give something to their children each Christmas. One of his cases turned things around and went on to become a judge.

“I got more enjoyment doing that than anything I’ve done in my life,” Murray said. “I just loved it, to see someone redirect their life after they had trouble or made mistakes. In 17 years of doing it, one of my boys violated his probation.”

They were kind of like his players. When it came to handling people, Murray saw very different things from Neyland and Rupp. The son of a coal miner from Harlan, Ky., Murray’s family moved to LaFollette when he was 4 to open a restaurant. He fell in love with Billie Hatmaker in sixth grade and was hers for the rest of his life. After starring as a football halfback and basketball guard for LaFollette High, the 1949 graduate wrote a letter to Rupp requesting a tryout.

The 5-foot-8 Murray got the tryout, but not a spot on the team. He took a scholarship to East Tennessee State, nearly lost an eye after taking a cleat to the face, then left school and served three years in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division. He played football and basketball and created a softball league, but a jump in Fort Bragg, N.C., left him with a leg injury that ended his days as an athlete.

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Ronald Murray in his LaFollette home Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Murray is a former athletic trainer for Gen. Robert Neyland at Tennessee and Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp. He's 87 and still has strong feelings for both places, and carried lessons from both men into his life.
Michael Patrick/News Sentinel

Newspaper clipping of Ronald Murray working as a trainer on Earl Weaver for the Knoxville Smokies in 1956. Murray is a former athletic trainer for Gen. Robert Neyland at Tennessee and Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp.
Photo submitted

Ronald Murray with photos of his wife Billie in his LaFollette home Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Murray is a former athletic trainer for Gen. Robert Neyland at Tennessee and Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp. He's 87 and still has strong feelings for both places, and carried lessons from both men into his life.
Michael Patrick/News Sentinel

Ronald Murray in his LaFollette home Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Murray is a former athletic trainer for Gen. Robert Neyland at Tennessee and Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp. He's 87 and still has strong feelings for both places, and carried lessons from both men into his life.
Michael Patrick/News Sentinel

Ronald Murray in his LaFollette home Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Murray is a former athletic trainer for Gen. Robert Neyland at Tennessee and Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp. He's 87 and still has strong feelings for both places, and carried lessons from both men into his life.
Michael Patrick/News Sentinel

Ronald Murray keeps this plaque from the 50th Reunion of the 1956 UT football team on the wall in his bedroom in LaFollette Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Murray is a former athletic trainer for Gen. Robert Neyland at Tennessee and Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp. He's 87 and still has strong feelings for both places, and carried lessons from both men into his life.
Michael Patrick/News Sentinel

Family photos of Ronald Murray and his wife Billie on their wedding day and on their 50th wedding anniversary in his LaFollette home Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Murray is a former athletic trainer for Gen. Robert Neyland at Tennessee and Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp.
Michael Patrick/News Sentinel

Ronald Murray in his LaFollette home Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2017. Murray is a former athletic trainer for Gen. Robert Neyland at Tennessee and Kentucky basketball coach Adolph Rupp. He's 87 and still has strong feelings for both places, and carried lessons from both men into his life.
Michael Patrick/News Sentinel

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Discharged and back home in 1954, Murray met UT trainer Mickey O’Brien through LaFollette High football coach and former UT offensive lineman Al Rotella. O’Brien quizzed Murray on basic medical knowledge and offered him a job as assistant trainer.

At $150 a month, he’d be working for the legendary Neyland, who was athletic director after retiring from coaching in 1952. Murray got to see the career of all-time great Vols halfback and Heisman runner-up Johnny Majors.

"Ronnie was one of those guys everyone liked and respected," Majors said of Murray, still an occasional lunch partner. "And he was just a great friend to me. Still is."

Murray saw Neyland fire successor Harvey Robinson, give the job to Bowden Wyatt and run everything in his unique way.

“He was just one of the great guys to sit and talk to, and you did a lot more listening than talking,” Murray said of Neyland. “You hung on every word he said. He could take anything you said to him and tie it to football, put it in football terms. He saw football in life. And he could get discipline without saying a word. His presence was powerful. He’d walk up to a group of people and not say a word, and they’d fall silent. Then he’d make them all laugh.”

Discipline is where Neyland and Rupp intersected. But their approaches were quite different. The Tennessee and Kentucky basketball staffs were hanging together at Pat O’Brien’s in 1957 – typical of SEC road trips back then – when Rupp offered Murray a job. It was $195 a month, plus free tickets, plus the chance to be part of an elite program.

That 1957-58 Kentucky team earned the nickname “The Fiddlers” from Rupp because they fiddled around too much for his liking.

“Coach Rupp belittled them so damn much, I got to thinking they weren’t that good,” Murray said. “From the time he threw the ball up for practice, it was hell for the kids. Every single mistake, they ran.”

Murray took to bringing a tub full of ice and water right to the side of the court during practice. One day, star forward John Crigler suffered a nasty ankle twist. Murray shoved the foot immediately into the tub.

“You’re going to ruin that shoe!” Rupp yelled at him.

“Yeah, but he’ll be back practicing tomorrow,” Murray responded.

That ended up being the last of Rupp’s four national championship teams at Kentucky, coming back to beat Elgin Baylor and Seattle in the title game at Louisville’s Freedom Hall. It was a life experience. But Billie was unhappy in Kentucky, in the couple’s first year of marriage.

“She used to say it was the coldest place in the world,” Murray said.

Home beckoned, and with it a chance to teach and coach. Billie got a job as a high school guidance counselor. Murray started a basketball little league in LaFollette, which he believes was one of the first in the nation. He was elected as a county commissioner. Rupp invited Murray’s 1962-63 LaFollette High team to a Kentucky holiday tournament, and the boys got to interact with the Wildcats afterward.

“One of the highlights of my life,” Murray said, “to see those kids have that opportunity.”

Murray reconnected with the Vols after his return, helping run the press box during football games for several years and holding season tickets for several more. He lost Billie in 2014. Neuropathy makes it difficult for him to walk. But he lives next door to one of his granddaughters, and on his living room walls he has the memories of a life full of opportunity and experience. And a TV to watch Tennessee football and Kentucky basketball.

Contact Joe Rexrode at jrexrode@tennessean.com and follow him on Twitter @joerexrode.